What's worth watching, and what might not be, in prime time on Thursday.

It is neither TV's best nor most popular series, but in certain social-media quarters, it may be the most discussed. If all that chatter has left you curious, you can catch up on the show with this one-hour retrospective and then hop on board with the season premiere (10 ET/PT).

If nothing else, The Originals (* out of four) should give us some idea of just how deep the current teenage affection for vampire stories goes. If it can support a show this ludicrously written and terribly cast, it's deeper than most adults can fathom. As you'd guess, there is nothing even remotely original about this Vampire Diaries spinoff, which copies that show's bad vampire/good vampire sibling dynamic and transports it to New Orleans. The charmless bad boy (Joseph Morgan), a vampire-werewolf hybrid, ineffectively poses and glowers while his good-boy brother (Daniel Gillies) prattles on about family at such nauseating length, you fear he's about to break into song. War's afoot; witches, curses and miracle babies abound; and yet the brew is sleep-inducing rather than intoxicating. That almost counts as an accomplishment

Two and a Half Men | CBS, 9:30 ET/PT

Say this for Men: Some fine actors still want to take part. Supplementing an already strong regular cast, the show now has Amber Tamblyn, a new series regular as Charlie's long-lost daughter, and tonight gets a guest appearance from an all-time great, Carl Reiner.